File:Ronald_D._Laing.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons
R. D. Laing
Sign in to saveAlso known as Ronald Laing, R.D. Laing, Ronald D. Laing, Ronald David Laing
unorthodox Scottish psychiatrist
R. D. Laing was a Scottish psychiatrist known for challenging conventional approaches to mental illness and the treatment of psychiatric patients. His unconventional ideas about the nature of mental disorders and the psychiatric establishment remain influential and controversial in discussions about how society understands and treats mental health.
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Film & TV
Govanhill, Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Ronald David Laing, usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness – in particular, the experience of psychosis. Laing's views on the causes and treatment of serious mental dysfunction, greatly influenced by existential philosophy, ran counter to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the day by taking the expressed feelings of the individual patient or…
Known for
- Arthur Janov's Primal Therapy2018
- All Divided Selves2012
- Great Thinkers: In Their Own Words — Self (archive footage)2011
- Did You Used to Be R.D. Laing?1989
- Knots — Man watching rehearsal1975
- Asylum — Himself1972
- Cain's Film1969
- The Dick Cavett Show — Self - Guest1968
- Ah, Sunflower — Self1967
- New Tempo: Stimulants1967
via TMDB
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Ronald
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United Kingdom
- Place of birth
- Glasgow
- Place of death
- Saint-Tropez
- Occupation
- psychoanalyst
- Educated at
- University of Glasgow
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Field of work
- psychiatry
- Military branch
- British Army
- Image
- Ronald D. Laing.jpg
Show 7 more facts
- date of birth
- 1927-10-07
- date of death
- 1989-08-23
- Commons category
- Ronald David Laing
- manner of death
- natural causes
- cause of death
- myocardial infarction
- name in native language
- Ronald David Laing
- influenced by
- Jean-Paul Sartre
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
~23 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Ronald David Laing (7 October 1927 – 23 August 1989), usually cited as R. D. Laing, was a Scottish psychiatrist who wrote extensively on mental illness, particularly psychosis and schizophrenia. Politically, Laing was regarded as a thinker of the New Left. He has been theatrically portrayed by Mike Maran, Alan Cox, Billy Mack, and David Tennant in the 2017 film Mad to Be Normal.
Laing's views on the causes and treatment of psychopathological phenomena were influenced by his study of existential philosophy and ran counter to the chemical and electroshock methods that had become psychiatric orthodoxy. Laing took the expressed feelings of the individual patient or client as valid descriptions of personal experience rather than simply as symptoms of mental illness. Although associated in the public mind with the anti-psychiatry movement, he rejected the label. Laing regarded schizophrenia as the normal psychological adjustment to a dysfunctional social context.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “R. D. Laing” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.